This just arrived in my inbox from Jo: I hope you find it helpful! I’ll be asking the RS Raspberry Pi team to swing by the comments section later if you’ve got any questions for them.

Thanks to all those of you who have posted comments – positive and negative – since our last update. We recognise that many of you are still wondering where you are in our queue and when you will be able to purchase your Raspberry Pi.

While this won’t resolve all of your questions we hope this update will give you a clearer picture of what is happening right now.

A secure delivery schedule is in place for the next 75,000 Raspberry Pi boards, which will take us through May and June. Next week we will be opening up our online Raspberry Pi store and inviting the next customers in our queue to place their orders.

To give you some idea of what this means, by 5pm GMT on the day that Raspberry Pi launched, 29th February, we had received around 75,000 registrations. We expect to invite all of these people to place their order over the course of the next 7 to 10 days.

We’re preparing further communications that will give more detail on our queue and what this means for people who registered post 29th Feb, which we’ll share shortly. In the meantime, we’ve also updated our FAQs and will continue to post updates on a regular basis.

wow, finally, i ‘registered my interest’ with RS and got in at like 45 seconds after it came up at midnight here (winnipeg) and managed to get in on Newark about 20 minutes later, still no Pi till June haha

You saying that is actually really enlightening. I got my order in early, and my ship date is still set for August (although I ordered early enough for a June delivery). Knowing that someone out there already has a May 29th date listed is really helpful to try to divine when mine should ship out. A tad disappointing, but better to find out now rather than hoping all through May that it will come in.

I once got a 4G microSD card from Ebay for my 808 keychain camera. Turns out every time I formatted, next time the device would be a bit smaller…. In the end only 2G was left. Below 2G the effect stopped. By threatening “bad feedback” or invoking buyer protection (actually I didn’t have to say that out loud), I got half my money back I got 2G instead of the 4G I wanted. (This solution was my suggestion).

Anyway…. A week later I discover that it is a bug in the keychain camera that happens when you use it as an USB reader for the microSD card. The card still detects as 4G in other devices. I paid the refunded money again to the seller.

So…. I can attest that some of the reportedly bad SD cards on Ebay are “user error”.

In the case of raspberry pi on Ebay, I don’t think there are much “fakers” on ebay. Many photograph their own real-pi. Ebay/paypal will block the money until the buyer is satisfied. Some post a believable story: “I managed to order early with RS and with Farnell expecting to only get one due to the one-per-person limit, and now they both sent me a ‘pi”.

Thanks to everyone at the Raspi and RS teams. Received my device yesterday (by complete surprise too) and booting it for the first time was a magical moment. The timing couldn’t have really been much better either, as it arrived right for my birthday. :)

Godspeed to everyone still on the queue aswell, things will work out in the end, even if it feels like an eternity, but it IS worth the wait!

That’s great advice. I had some problems at the last step I got error message from server and couldn’t do anything. But now I managed to enter the shop again with my original auth key and went trough the whole procedure successfully.

To be clear:
– I registered my interest with RS on Feb 29 (Feb28 by my clock)
– On May 4th I received a code permitting me to place my order.
– Placed my order on May 4th.
– Received RasPi on May 11th.

Only Farnell/Element14 allowed people to place orders on Feb 29th. RS only registered interest.

Ever heard the phrase “Good things come to those who wait”? I mean be realistic did you honestly expect that with the shear number of devices ordered things would go silky smooth and there’d be no problems???

RS and Farnell essentially got DDOS’d and people who ordered feb 29th are still waiting for even a response to their enquiry let alone an invitation to order.

You’d think I enjoy moaning, and as for good things come to those who wait, I’ve been following this project since the very early prototypes running ATMEL chipsets were shown off (essentially a large arduino)

Sorry, but it certainly could have been handled worse! I am of the personal opinion that if people are put off just because of hiccups in the order process, especially when so much explanation has been given as to why these hiccups happened, then they really don’t need one at this stage.

As Mike says, this hasn’t been explained at all. Portraying all the people who are annoyed at RS’s handling of this as ungrateful and undeserving is trite and mean.

I can’t speak for Mike, but I don’t care that it took a few months extra because of testing etc. I care that RS deleted orders and is keeping schtum about it. I have my Pi, I want all the others affected by this to have theirs. That’s all.

Haven’t you been banned once? For accusing the Foundation of being a scam? I guess the arrival of Pi’s to people proves you were really REALLY incorrect. Waiting in silence is pretty good idea. Whining doesn’t help.

“Haven’t you been banned once? For accusing the Foundation of being a scam? I guess the arrival of Pi’s to people proves you were really REALLY incorrect. Waiting in silence is pretty good idea. Whining doesn’t help.”

No. I’ve been banned before for asking a question. A legit question to need to be answered. It’s the second time you say something that’s not true about me. I don’t know why you feel you are better than me to this point but it seems its just lack of information or facts.

As you are an admin here I invite you to take a better look when you acuse someone of doing something.

We don’t ban people for asking questions, as anyone having a quick glance through the comments will see; we welcome debate and dissent, as long as it’s done politely. We do ban people for being repeatedly and unreasonably rude, which is why you were banned. As a general rule of thumb, we do not welcome behaviour here which we would not welcome in our places of work or our homes. You were banned for overstepping that mark quite spectacularly.

I forwarded the email RS sent apologising for removing my name to RPi, I don’t want to “have a moan” or anything of that sort.

My gripe is that RS took names off the list, which has resulted in people that should have their pis now; and issuing an update with no mention of that. To me, that’s more keeping people placated than in the loop.

RS Electronics, but not sure if in first minutes, even first hours. I was waiting for the “grand opening”, but I couldn’t find where it’s hidden once I got in. All I could see is “show interest”, but twitter account of raspi team said it’s not the correct one. site kept being unusable so few hours later i lost hope and went to work, occasionally trying to load site up.
i cannot remember exactly when, but it could be that I signed up for raspberry pi in 3 hours after fail de grande. that morning (+2 GMT here) was blurry.

Interesting that RS will have managed to fill orders (or expressions of interest) placed only up until 5pm on launch day by the end of June while Farnell will have filled orders placed up until April 18th by then. Obviously RS got a lot more EOIs on the first day, but it still seems that Farnell has larger capacity than RS.

My experience indicates otherwise. I placed an order/interest on launch day at both companies. Now it looks like my ETA with RS is about 14 days. While Newark still says the end of August. RS looks like they may be better equiped.

Funnily enough I registered my interest within half an our of the release then i went to tell a friend who subsequently registered his interest.
he got his pi last week and i have not had any emails from rs regarding the availability

Well, at least RS seem to be moving units, and (more importantly) providing some communication with customers. I placed an order with Newark/Farnell on March 4 (once I could finally get in long enough to order one), and… Nothing. Well, strike that, exactly one email letting me know my April ship date was now August 16, and nothing has moved since. Even after the CE certification thing was resolved, still not a peep from Newark. Frustrating.

I THINK that you managed to register your interest pretty early on. So you got a special order number for those that are in the first 1000 + 4000 batch. I expect yours will ship in the next week, as RS is, just like farnell, currently shipping from their second (4k) batch.

Hey guys! Well today I received the invitation to order from RS, I registered my interest at about 6:03 on Pi day. I was able to order without any problems but I have one question that I would like to be answered by one of RS representatives…. When I order my pi I used a PO BOX address in the US, would you guys be able to deliver to a PO BOX addresses or would I have to contact RS to change the address? Btw I ended being in the low 4000’s and I believe I might be one of the first (if not the first) person to receive a Raspberry Pi in Puerto Rico! Good job guys! Greetings!

Hi – i’ll need to check with our courier. Can you send me your order reference number along with your preferred delivery address to raspberrypi@rswww.com (reference Mike@RS in your subject title) and i’ll get this checked out.

I have to admit that I’ve been less than happy with how the launch went but much to my surprise I got an order notification on the 4th, ordered right away and it showed up from RS today. I didn’t expect it to ship until at least today so I was caught a little flat footed and didn’t have all my accesories lined up. Right now I can’t charge my phone and use my Rpi simultaneously, but I’m not complaining. :) So while friends were apparently dropped from the list I wanted to give credit where credit is due. I hope everyone is able to get some Pi soon. Having one in hand has renewed my excitement.

i really don’t know what to thing about this i pre-order pi from farnell on 29th and register interes from rs i know that rs have my email becouse i recive updates on my mail about weekly update but i still did not recive any info from neither of one about my order

Hi Samir – i’ll pick this up with the local team to understand what the problem is. If you are unable to register on the RS India site, please use the UK site (they all feed into the same list, and we are only treat the site id you registered with to determine which language we should send further information to you). The link is http://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi

I originally registered interest with RS for my PI @ 6:05 on the big day and was able to order it with my code yesterday. My Ordernumber is 4xxx … so I guess only 4k people have ordered from RS before me! Let’s see how long it takes to get here (Germany)!

RS is alot better a talking with Liz .. look at the last time Newark/Element 14 sent anything to her. I’m being to wonder if Newark/E14 is even shipping these to the states yet. I wonder because I’ve been give 5 ship dates so far .. Before today, it was May 14th is the lastest one. When I checked today .. it was AUGUST 16th !!

With respect, this update does not say much apart from 75,000 Pis are ordered and “we will open our shop soon”. It’s nice of the RS team to keep in touch, but I would rather they said something a little more concrete when they did. Although I got a registration in on Day 1, I was surprised when the first mail arrived (earlier on this week).
So my reply to RS is “I’ll believe it when I am holding the package in my hands”.

I was visiting NZ on launch day and I tried 2 or 3 times to register my interest after the 6am UK launch time (was about 7pm in NZ). Due to the DDOS effect I don’t know which of my attempts actually got through but I have been receiving the updates so I know my name is registered somewhere. One attempt was in the opening minuits, the second was about 10 mins later and having received no confirmation at the time I tried a third time a little later. As I said, which one registered I don’t know as the site was slow and hanging up that day but it is very annoying not knowing where in the que I am because of that. This new peice of information is fantastic news but I still think it would have been a great peice of customer service if RS just sent emails out saying where abouts in the que people are. Not a specific number but surely it’s possible to tell people which 1000 unit block they are in, E.G between 5000-6000 or something. I was hoping to get my Pi in time for going out to France for 16 weeks of work but I guess I will have to wait now and try to get it sent to a French address instead or wait untill I get home. Thanks to the Liz and the RS team for the updates that have been given though!

I’d love to know where James H gets off on being so arrogant? do you get paid for this service or is it entirely free?

The bottom line is that any company that had the same bad fortune/lack of management/vision – would have gone down the pan long before now so it is a good job this was run as a charity – otherwise there might never have been a board that saw the light of day.

So, things are finally moving along and the bitterness and dissappointment will soon be behind us all, so things are looking up. Hang in there guys, if you don’t get one soon another company will do a better job in a year or so

Oh, forgot to mention, the company/Foundation didn’t go down the pan, has a sought after product, and is known worldwide as the producer of what may be a game changing product.. If you are so confident of another company coming along doing a better job, I suggest you try starting one and getting a product out there. Or are you one of those people who is great at giving ‘advice’ but really rubbish at doing anything?

So how to tell where my order with Allied ended up in the Queue?
I gave my cc and shipping info etc. on March 2nd and got a web order number of 2500071xxx
I’m guessing there are 3 possibilities here which I’ll list in order from least likely/most happy to most likely/most unhappy.
1. The 25000 is a placeholder and I got in just under the 75K mark.
2. I’m less than 75K but only for Allied and will be much farther back when combined with RS orders.
3. There are just over 2.5 billion orders in front of me

Thanks for the info! I am looking forward to getting a Raspberry Pi, but I have a question about the online store. Will it allow us to see where we are at on the queue and probably even allow production to be sped up a bit?
I really like the idea, and plan on using it to run a small web server to host my small website.
– Colin

I was invited to place my order and I did so, but it ended with an error (after i gave my credit card number). So I refreshed the page, and I now have two confirmation e-mails with different references. So how can I be sure my order is taken into account and that I will not pay twice (I’m sure I won’t get two slices of the Pi because of the one per person policy ;)) ?

Put it differently: where can I ask this question? (I see no feedback/support form or e-mail adress on the RS website)

Hi – there have been some tweets on this problem as well. While all the issues raised through twitter have been resolved, the safest option is to send us your order numbers (email them to raspberrypi@rswww.com) and we’ll check & confirm what’s happened.

Hey,
i got the “Time to order” mail from RS on the 4th and the confirmations mail on the 6th of may.
The confirmation mail sais: “We currently expect to despatch your Raspberry Pi within 7 working days. Once your order has been despatched we will send you further details on shipment and courier, to help track your delivery. ”
but I still didn’t get any other mail.
What should I do, just wait?

Andre, I received received the same email you did, and about a week later my Pi showed up, pretty much unannounced. I didn’t get any other communication from RS. So hang tight, your lovely little red+white satchel bag is on its way to you as we speak! :)

There have been a few questions and comments from people who placed orders with Allied between 1st-4th March asking what’s happened. To reassure everyone here, the Allied orders are in our database, with the timestamp they were logged into the Allied system. We’re working with the Allied team to make sure we ship against these orders in line with allocation of Raspberry Pi’s to everyone in our queue. As we start shipping out from the 75,000 coming in between May and June, we should be able to advise on shipping dates for our Allied customers.

I received my invitation to order email from RS today. Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t be able to place an order because I can’t find a way to enter separate billing and delivery addresses (it only asks for a delivery address and then uses that as the billing address on the credit card details page).

Is it possible to have the Raspberry Pi shipped to an address other than the billing address?

RS sucks, 6 people at my company registered interest before me, and none of them received their confirmation or RS shop email etc, but I received mine yesterday…
if they tell you “we cant say where you are in the first come first serve queue” its because they lost your info!

That is a shame. I don’t like farnell so went with RS and have been regretting it ever since I heard about not being able to tell anyone where they are in the queue. The good news is I’ve stopped caring – I’m only going to send mine on a one way ticket into space on commercial grade fireworks so is a waste of money whatever way you look at it.

I registered within an hour of launch and didn’t receive an invitation to place an order either. Just emailed them this morning and had my invitation within an hour and half. No explanation, no detail on what happened. I just placed my order, but the estimated dispatch is only in three weeks! Seems I should have contacted them earlier for a more timely delivery wrt what other folks are reporting here.
I suggest your colleagues contact RS directly to remind them to be put back on the list ASAP.

Still no invite to buy here, one guy I know already has 3 pi’s, one from rs and 2 from farnell. Another guy I know that registered interest about an hour after me on the 29th got his invite and code today and yet still no invite for me. I am sure i will get my hands on one eventually, just annoying that someone can have 3 when most of us still can’t get our hands on even 1. Atleast I had a chance to have a quick play with one today, unfortunate thing is I want mine even more now I have seen them in the flesh , they are great little devices.

Finally got my RS Pi today. $43 charge, no hidden inexplicable fees, well-packaged and shipped via DHL with signature required. About as different an experience from Farnell Export (so far) as you could imagine.

Hi Jenny
We were invited to order our Raspberry pi on the 03/04/2012 with the promise of a T-shirt for our patience . We have got a reference number of ORP020444 . Have you got any news of delivery dates . We ordered the PI from Farnell uk
Thanks Ian

Hi Jenny
We were invited to order our Raspberry pi on the 03/04/2012 with the promise of a T-shirt for our patience . We have got a reference number of ORP020444 . Have you got any news of delivery dates . We ordered the PI from Farnell uk

Who is http://raspberrypi.rsdelivers.com and how are they related to raspberrypi?
The reason I ask is there are lots of fake sellers out there and how do we know this is a valid email from the resellers of the Raspberry PI?